The United States resumes daylight saving time on Sunday 4 November. Here’s another excerpt from my book on the history of daylight saving time around the world, The Great Daylight Saving Time Controversy, available at Amazon, Kobo, Apple and Google. This excerpt looks at the lead-up to national daylight saving time in the United States during World War II …

With the war escalating in Europe, the United States became increasingly concerned for its friends across the Atlantic and for its own defence. By 1940, it was sending war materials and money to the Allies, which was stepped up after France fell in spring. American volunteers were helping out in aircraft squadrons despite it being illegal, and the country was sending billions of dollars in food, oil and equipment under the Lend-Lease agreement after the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941.

Various people and organisations were calling for national daylight saving to redirect energy into the country’s defence efforts by early 1941, including business groups such as the Merchants’ Association of New York, interior secretary Harold Ickes, and Robert Garland, often regarded as the “father of daylight saving” in the United States and who had recently retired after 28 years as a Pittsburgh councillor. Ickes felt that substantial fuel savings could be had from daylight saving but also called for priorities and restrictions, believing that making aluminium was more important than night baseball. Power shortages were also evident in drought areas that relied on hydroelectricity. Industrialists pushed for continuous daylight saving, while defence chiefs wanted two hours of the measure. Bills were introduced for federal daylight time.

President Franklin Roosevelt asked Congress on 15 July to draft a bill to give him broad power to implement daylight saving, including on a national or regional basis, just in the summer or continuously, and for one or two hours. He wrote to the governors of south-eastern states where power shortages were particularly acute asking them to initiate daylight saving. A week later, the governors of Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi and South Carolina issued proclamations, while Georgia, Florida and Louisiana refused, and North Carolina and Virginia at first took no action but later agreed to the measure. As governors didn’t have authority to order a change in time, the proclamations only applied to state offices and not to businesses and citizens, who would have to act on a voluntary basis perhaps encouraged to varying degrees by their governor and other politicians. One person who was less than enthusiastic was South Carolina representative and chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, Hampton Fulmer, who said that “the farmers wouldn’t even set their clocks ahead … It might be all right in big cities but in the little old country villages and farms, it would be nonsense. They wouldn’t pay any attention to it.”[1]

Overall support for daylight saving was strong though, as evidenced by a Gallup poll in June 1941 (see following table [see book]). Respondents were asked: “To save electricity and to increase daylight working hours, it has been suggested that the entire country be put on daylight saving time until the end of September. Do you favor or oppose this suggestion?” Now that the country’s security was at stake, many people changed their minds about daylight saving. Results showed that all parts of the country were happy to have the measure on a national basis, including the South region [which had been opposed to it in a poll in April 1940] where approval was at 64 per cent, while only 16 per cent were opposed and 20 per cent were undecided. Nationwide, two-thirds of people would be happy with daylight saving and just one-fifth against the idea.

Continuous daylight saving was less popular. As part of the same survey, people were asked: “Would you favor or oppose keeping the country on daylight saving time throughout the coming year?” Just 38 per cent favoured this proposition, 41 per cent opposed it and 21 per cent were undecided. Only New England and Middle Atlantic showed majority support (see table [see book]).

Despite strong support for the measure by the public, the plan for national daylight saving was shelved on 5 December 1941 due to lack of interest by Congress. Two days later, the Japanese launched a surprise attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii and America declared war on Japan the next day. The United States immediately stepped up its assistance to the Allies, which led to Germany declaring war on the US on 11 December to which America reciprocated on the same day. Talks on daylight saving resumed by mid month, including the option of all year fast time for the duration of the war and beyond.

Another Gallup poll in December showed an increase in support for continuous daylight saving although the surveys aren’t strictly comparable over time due to different wording in questions and a new set of circumstances with America now at war. This time, respondents were asked: “As long as the war lasts, would you favor or oppose daylight saving time in your community for the entire year?” The poll found 57 per cent of people approved of the plan, 30 per cent didn’t and 13 per cent were undecided (see following table [see book]). In each region, considerably more residents backed the policy than disliked it. The Far West now had the second highest proportion in favour, probably due to the threat across the Pacific. Support for the proposal was higher in larger cities than smaller ones. Resistance continued from farmers, with just 36 per cent supporting it. A North Dakota farmer commented: “You can’t change a cow’s milk habits to fit the clock, or evaporate the morning dew an hour earlier.”

In January 1942, Congress debated the bill to give the president the power to order daylight saving of up to two hours, regionally or nationally, and all year or just in summer. The House didn’t want to give him this much flexibility and set down a few specifics, including just an hour of daylight saving across the country on a continuous basis. Support for advanced time year round was strong among representatives as peak demand for electricity in the evening was higher in winter than summer and keeping the clocks ahead all year would conserve a considerable amount of extra fuel. The amendments were made and the bill was passed by both houses. Daylight saving would start 20 days after the president signed the bill and extend to six months after the end of the war or some earlier date approved by Congress.

Meanwhile, the Idaho Chamber of Commerce wanted the Interstate Commerce Commission to move the southern part of the state to Pacific time as this would put it in its true zone rather than in Mountain time. Standard time in capital city Boise was 45 minutes ahead of local time. With year round daylight saving added on, sunrise would be as late as about 9:20 a.m. in winter. Other areas would also be disadvantaged by the new time, such as parts of Ohio and Michigan which had been transferred from Central to Eastern time in 1936 and would effectively have two hours of daylight saving. However, no changes were made to standard time zones.

Roosevelt agreed to the amendments to the bill and signed it on 20 January. It became “An Act to promote the national security and defense by establishing daylight saving time”. The measure began on 9 February for all federal government and interstate commerce activities, and the government was confident the rest of the country would follow. A week before daylight saving was due to start, the government labelled it “War Time” and the Eastern time zone, for example, would be on Eastern War Time.

The United Kingdom goes onto daylight saving time once again on 28 October. Here’s an excerpt from my book, The Great Daylight Saving Time Controversy, on the lead-up to the United Kingdom’s experiment with permanent daylight saving time or GMT+1 in 1968-71. The move was controversial and almost straightaway there were various studies and moves to rescind it. …

The question of harmonising British time with Europe came up again in parliament in 1963. Most of the Continent didn’t have daylight saving at that time although many countries such as France, Belgium and the Netherlands were effectively on year round summer time with clocks 40-50 minutes ahead of the sun in their capital cities. The United Kingdom was on the same time as its European trading partners for seven months each year but was one hour behind in the other five months. Support for staying on GMT+1 all year was strong among business and workers as shown by the 1960 survey but not among the farming community or the education sector. By late December, sunrise wouldn’t be until after 9 a.m. in London and around 9:45 a.m. in Edinburgh.

In general, the tide of opinion was thought to be moving in the direction of keeping the clocks forward. In October 1966, just before the end of daylight saving, a motion was introduced into the House of Commons to align with Western Europe all year:

“That this House, recognising the success of the experimental extensions to the period of British Summer Time and that reversion to Greenwich Mean Time will unnecessarily hamper commercial communication with Europe, urges Her Majesty’s Government to bring Great Britain into line with Europe by adopting British Summer Time, mid-European time, throughout the whole year.”[1]

Home secretary Roy Jenkins undertook a review into the matter in 1966 and 1967, consulting with 87 organisations in agriculture, industry, commerce, construction, energy, education, travel, health, sport, women’s groups, local government, and other areas. He was able to report in March that the Trades Union Congress supported the proposal. The congress had been in favour of continuous daylight saving back in 1960. Jenkins finished his inquiry and was satisfied that shifting the United Kingdom’s time zone to GMT+1 after the end of summer time in 1968 would be in the best interests of the country. An announcement to this effect was made on 22 June 1967.

There seemed to be little backlash to what would in effect be a move to ongoing daylight saving time. Even the Farmers’ Union of Scotland more or less accepted the decision, with president Mr C Young stating: “We do not like it and we do not see the need for it, but we will put up with it if it is in the national interest.” A public opinion poll found that 45 per cent of people approved of the government’s proposal while 25 per cent didn’t want any change and 27 per cent had no particular view.

Daylight saving in 1968 would commence on the earlier date of 18 February for several reasons. It would accustom people to the new time before a permanent change. Sunrise in London would be at about the same clock time, just after 8 a.m., as in late December. Sunset would be 6:20 p.m., after peak traffic, which should mean fewer road deaths and injuries. Clocks would then remain one hour ahead rather than being wound back in October.

A name was needed for the proposed new time arrangement as British Summer Time would no longer be appropriate. Home secretary James Callaghan called for suggestions from members, the media and the public as to what the new time should be called. He received over 100 different names, such as British European Time, British Standard Time, Central European Time, Mid-European Time, Western European Time, Churchill Time, Willett Time, Advance Time, Advanced Meridian Time, Civil Time, Common Time, Mean Civil Time, and Permanent Time. Names that included Greenwich were Advanced Greenwich Time, Greenwich Advanced Time, Greenwich Ante-Meridianal Time, Greenwich British Time, Greenwich Global Time, Greenwich Less One, Greenwich Mean Time Advanced, Greenwich Plus Time, Greenwich Time, New Greenwich Mean Time, and Plus Greenwich. Some novelty names included Orbitim, Orbitime, Orbitum, Same All the Year Round Time, Solar Plus, Solar Time, and Solextra.

Two newspapers ran naming competitions and British Standard Time was selected by one paper as the most favoured choice by far. Callaghan agreed with it. The name was the standout choice in the government poll too, being more than five times as popular as the second favourite pick. In the House of Lords, 61 preferred British Standard Time to Advanced Greenwich Time and 49 favoured the latter. Greenwich Mean Time would be retained for astronomy, meteorology and navigation.

The British Standard Time Bill was introduced into the House of Lords in November 1967. Minister of state Lord Stonham stressed that the proposed change in time zone wasn’t so much due to the United Kingdom trying to join the European Economic Community but to expected improvements in the overall economy after weighing up the advantages for productivity, energy, communication and transport with the disadvantages for agriculture and construction. On the social side were the greater opportunities for outdoor sport and other activities, the expected reduction in road accidents, relative safety for school children heading to school in the dark compared with walking home after nightfall, and not having to alter the clocks twice a year. After a lengthy debate, the bill passed the second reading by 49 votes to 13. Later it was read a third time and sent to the Commons where an even longer debate was followed by a 179 to 61 second reading vote at about 11 p.m.

The bill was eventually passed and became the British Standard Time Act 1968 on 26 July. Plenty of concerns remained, such as children in the north walking to school in the dark who would be encouraged to wear reflective armbands as well as vests and cuffs for visibility, especially as some local governments turned off street lighting at midnight. By May 1968, secretary of state for Scotland William Ross had received 114 representations from local councils, churches, agricultural and other organisations, private firms and individuals against moving permanently to GMT+1 and none in support of it. A few representations had been received by the Home Department from England, three from Wales and none from Northern Ireland by late in the year.

After more than 50 years of daylight saving, the United Kingdom abandoned the practice and instead shifted to GMT+1, which would be used 12 months of the year, initially as a three year trial from 27 October 1968.

Much of Australia goes onto daylight saving time this Sunday. This includes New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory, but not Queensland, Western Australia and Northern Territory which do not have daylight saving. It is usually reported that all of Australia first had daylight saving time on 1 January 1917 under federal legislation during World War I. Tasmania actually had daylight saving from 1 October 1916. It also had daylight saving in 1917-18 and 1918-19 when the rest of Australia stayed on standard time and this is not commonly reported either.

The following excerpt is from my book, The Great Daylight Saving Time Controversy, and is from the start of the 13 page chapter on Tasmania, ‘Apple Isle leads the way’.

“Tasmania was the first Australian state to introduce daylight saving time. This took place in October 1916, three months before federal legislation put the other five states, New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia, on daylight saving in January 1917. The Apple Isle turned its clocks forward for three summers during World War I, 1916-17, 1917-18 and 1918-19, whereas the other states opted out as soon as the federal government allowed them to in March 1917. Tasmania was also first with daylight saving in the post-World War II period, readopting it in 1967-68, four years ahead of other states.

The location and size of Tasmania probably makes it more suited to daylight saving than other Australian states, which are larger and warmer. The Apple Isle has a cool temperate climate, not unlike the United Kingdom and parts of Europe and North America. It is small, covering an area of around 68,000 square kilometres (26,000 square miles) or about half the size of England and, excluding small islands, extends roughly from latitude 40.7 degrees to 43.6 degrees south and from longitude 144.6 degrees to 148.3 degrees east. The state doesn’t have to worry about large differences in solar time between west and east or warm evenings. Sunrise and sunset times in capital city Hobart in midsummer would be about 4:30 a.m. and 7:50 p.m. without daylight saving.

Tasmania wasn’t the first Australian state to introduce a daylight saving bill into its parliament. Victoria brought in eight bills between 1908 and 1916 and New South Wales three from 1909 to 1916 before the Commonwealth government moved to bring in nationwide daylight saving. Initially, Tasmania seemed less than enthusiastic about the concept. During a discussion on daylight saving at the May 1915 Premiers’ Conference in Sydney, Tasmanian premier John Earle of the Labor Party quipped: “We anticipate in our state having shortly an electrical system that will be better and cheaper than daylight!”[1]

Despite Earle’s comment, a Daylight Saving Bill to “promote the earlier use of daylight in summer” was brought into the Tasmanian Parliament on 1 July 1915. It would apply for six months each year from September to March. Charles Howroyd, Labor member for Bass, was opposed to the bill as he felt it would be used as an excuse to extend overtime and wanted a committee to inquire into and report on it.

A select committee of five members, including Howroyd, was set up on 30 September. It sent a circular to 100 businesses, trade unions, government bodies, and individuals, seeking their views and pointing out what it saw as the advantages of moving the clock hands:

increased time in daylight for recreation

saving of cost for artificial light

daylight for military training without trenching so much on Saturday afternoon

less use of licensed houses

general benefit to health on account of greater time spent in the open air, and less time in artificially lighted rooms.[2]

The committee met six times and examined 20 witnesses. Support for daylight saving was strong. The transport sector, post office and education department were in favour as were large businesses and unions. Objections were considered from occupational groups who already rose early although the committee felt this affected only a small minority of the community. Also, theatres were worried that people wouldn’t attend while it was still light outside, but this concern was brushed off by the committee. It admitted that it thought the saving in artificial lighting would be small and any advantages for licensed houses minor. The committee saw the benefits relating to recreation and military training as significant but better general health from lower use of artificial light as less important.

An amendment to shift the start time to October was proposed as the weather was still quite wintry in Tasmania in September. Howroyd tried unsuccessfully to get the committee to reject the whole idea. A favourable report was released on 23 December 1915, much later than the scheduled date of 2 November. But the bill went no further.

It was followed up by a Daylight Saving Bill introduced by treasurer Neil Lewis on 2 August 1916. The bill passed through the House of Assembly on 18 August but was held up in the Legislative Council as John Hope of the Anti-Socialist Party and member for the rural electorate of Meander wanted it stopped. However, the motion was lost 12 votes to 4 and the bill was passed, becoming the Daylight Saving Act 1916 on 22 September.

This was Australia’s first daylight saving time legislation. It was to apply from the first Sunday in October until the last Sunday in March each year. Newspapers reported: “Practically everybody is welcoming the innovation. Only farmers and milkmen are growling, because it will shorten their early morning.” Clocks were advanced one hour at 2 a.m. on Sunday 1 October 1916. Daylight saving was applied in all Australian states and territories from 1 January 1917 under federal legislation (see chapter 18: Southern states in and out of sync). This ended on 25 March, the same day that Tasmania reverted to standard time under its own Act.

Many people, especially in the country, were opposed to daylight saving. …

The following is an extract from my book on daylight saving time, The Great Daylight Saving Time Controversy, and shows how certain events in World War I initiated daylight saving time in the US for the first time in 1918. The ebook can be obtained from Amazon, Kobo Books, Apple and Google. See links at bottom …

… A German U-boat had sunk British passenger liner Lusitania in May 1915 with 128 Americans among the dead. President [Woodrow] Wilson had declared that “America was too proud to fight” and demanded an end to passenger ship attacks. Soon supporters of daylight saving were linking the idea to patriotism and efficiency, with slogans such as “mobilize an extra hour of daylight and help win the war”.

Then, in February 1917, America learned of a coded telegram sent the previous month by German foreign secretary Arthur Zimmermann via the German ambassador in Washington, D.C. to the German ambassador in Mexico. It asked that he persuade the Mexican government to become Germany’s ally against the United States in exchange for financial assistance and support to regain Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, lost in the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848. The telegram was intercepted by the British. The same message announced that Germany was starting unrestricted submarine warfare from 1 February. Over the next two months, a number of American merchant ships were attacked and three sank. This was the final straw.

On 2 April 1917, the first day of the new parliamentary session, Wilson asked Congress to declare war on Germany. Congress complied and on 6 April the United States was at war. Less than two weeks later, on 17 April, a bill calling for standard time and daylight saving time was drawn up by the National Daylight Saving Association and brought into Congress by [William] Borland [of Missouri] and senator William Calder of Brooklyn. The bill not only asked for five months of daylight saving, but to finally make railway time (effectively standard time) official, which had been observed by virtually the whole country for well over 30 years.

A long list of leading daylight saving supporters testified before the Senate committee, including [Marcus] Marks, [Robert] Garland, [Lincoln] Filene, George Renaud, C. M. Hayes and [Harold] Jacoby. They presented a wide range of arguments in favour of daylight saving, such as reduced fuel consumption, an increase in food production, improved health, and more time for recreation. Garland, for example, stated that the estimated number of incandescent lamps in America was 130 million and growing rapidly, and to illuminate them all for one hour a day from May to September took 937,000 tons of coal. The energy saved could be rechannelled into the war effort, he pointed out. Professor Robert Willson of Harvard University reminded the committee of how most cities near railway time zone boundaries chose the eastern zone and hence longer afternoons. Sidney Colgate of Colgate & Company spoke about his firm’s experiment in 1915, where it put clocks an hour ahead in July and August. A vote among staff found that 94 per cent wanted it to continue through September.

Meanwhile, very few places advanced their clocks in the summer of 1917. Two that did were the cities of Green Bay and Superior in Wisconsin although a number of businesses around the country and a few schools kept daylight saving hours. Perhaps the general thinking among communities was that national daylight saving was close and there was no need to go it alone.

As usual, farmers and the railways were against daylight saving time. The American Railway Association’s D. C. Stewart had calculated the number of timepieces at stations and on rail staff across the country at about 1.7 million and stressed to the committee that if just one clock or watch wasn’t changed correctly, there could be a terrible accident on one of the many single track lines.

While the reasons to have daylight saving were sufficient to carry the bill through the Senate on 27 June 1917, the bill’s path in the House of Representatives took much longer. Various government and business spokesmen supported the bill, and the press now largely favoured the scheme. P. S. Risdale of the National War Garden Commission said that daylight saving would add 910 million person hours of home vegetable gardening a year. This meant that more food produced by the large firms could be transported to America’s allies in Europe where millions of farm hands had been taken off the land to become soldiers, and countries were starving.

But farming and railway groups kept up their fierce opposition to daylight saving, as did many politicians. Some felt they couldn’t treat it as a pressing matter, such as representative Otis Wingo of Arkansas who commented:

“I do not know that I have any particular objection to this bill; I just decline to take it seriously. … A majority of the men who advocate this character of legislation have not seen the sun rise for twenty years. … This bill is for the relief of the slackers of the nation who are too lazy to get up early. … We should not be wasting our time on such bills, but should go on to the war-finance bill. … While our boys are fighting in the trenches, we are here like a lot of schoolboys ‘tinkering’ with the clocks.” (United States, Congressional Record, 1917)

Nevertheless, the tide of support for the bill continued to grow. When the House was advised that considerably more coal was consumed in the cooler months of March and October than over summer, it revised the bill from five to seven months of daylight time to start on the last Sunday in March and finish on the last Sunday in October. The amended bill was passed by 253 votes to 40 on 15 March 1918 and approved by the Senate the following day, becoming law on 19 March. The result was the Standard Time Act of 1918, or the Calder Act, which included daylight saving time, the long title being “An Act to save daylight and to provide standard time for the United States”.

Except for Alaska, clocks throughout the country were put forward an hour for the first time at 2 a.m. on Sunday 31 March 1918. Thus 2 a.m. became 3 a.m. Many folk stayed up until 2 a.m. to make the change although the National Daylight Saving Association had suggested that households adjust their clocks before they went to bed the previous evening and for workplaces to alter theirs at the end of the last shift of the previous week. It was Easter and priests were worried that people would oversleep and be late for service due to the time change. The association advised churches to “ring their bells more lustily than usual”.

Some people went out and celebrated the changeover. Thousands turned out at Madison Square Park in New York to watch a parade featuring the New York Police Department Band and members of the Boy Scouts. As the crowd listened to patriotic speeches, Marcus Marks appeared from the Aldine Club where he had been celebrating with other Daylight Saving Association members. He made his way to the Metropolitan Tower and moved the minute hand of the clock ahead an hour to resounding cheers. Similarly, William Calder attended a gathering in nearby Brooklyn where the Borough Hall clock was wound forward.

(end of extract)

The Great Daylight Saving Time Controversy can be obtained at the following:

In this excerpt from my nonfiction ebook, The Great Daylight Saving Time Controversy, I look at how William Willett of the UK first developed the concept of daylight saving time …

In the first decade of the twentieth century, at a time when many countries were coming to grips with standard time and time zones or hadn’t yet introduced them, English builder and fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, William Willett, was worried people were wasting daylight. Benjamin Franklin had raised the issue over 100 years earlier. Whereas Franklin suggested half jokingly that we get up and go to bed sooner, Willett proposed seriously that we move the clock hands forward. But the world was still in the middle of shifting its clocks from solar or local time to standard time.

After attending Marylebone Grammar School and gaining some commercial experience, Willett worked in his father’s business, Willett Building Services. The pair built houses in the better parts of London, where “Willett built” became synonymous with quality housing. He was always conscious of making the most of natural light in his buildings. At age 48, Willett was riding his horse in Petts Wood near his home at Chislehurst, Kent, south-east of London, early one summer’s morning in 1905. As a builder, he would take notice of the various houses he passed. He saw most of the blinds still shut and an idea for saving daylight occurred to him.

In his spare time over the next couple of years, Willett developed a plan to shift some of the early morning daylight to later in the day, noting the benefits this would bring and any objections he was likely to encounter. He wrote and published a booklet called The Waste of Daylight in July 1907. In it, he expressed concern about the hours of morning daylight not utilised in spring and summer and the lack of daylight at the end of the working day for outdoor leisure activities. He suggested that if some of the sunlight could be transferred from the morning to the evening, the advantages of extra exercise and recreation and the money saved on artificial lighting would accrue to all. He claimed opportunities for rifle practice as a further advantage.

His plan was to put clocks forward 20 minutes each Sunday in April for a total of 80 minutes and then back 20 minutes each Sunday in September. This process of phasing the change in and out, he argued, would mean no one would really notice it, yet people would have the benefit of an hour and 20 minutes extra light late in the day over the summer months. He illustrated how easy the change would be by describing how those travelling east or west by ship changed their watches and quickly forgot about it as they enjoyed other activities.

Willett’s idea seemed sensible, especially with daybreak so early in Britain in summer. Sunrise in London on 21 June was 3:43 a.m. and civil dawn 2:55 a.m., explaining the popularity of blinds and shutters to keep the light out. Under his proposal, sunrise would be just after 5 a.m. At the other end of the day, adding 80 minutes to the sunset time of 8:22 p.m. would push it out to 9:42 p.m. and civil dusk to 10:29 p.m. This would allow people to go to bed at 10 p.m. and not have to use artificial light. Those who retired later would need their electric lights, candles and lamps for up to 80 minutes less than usual.

His booklet included a calculation of total savings his idea could be expected to generate. He assumed the cost of artificial light was a tenth of a penny per head per hour. Under the scheme, the total amount of extra daylight in the evening was 210 hours a year. Using Whitaker’s estimate of the population of Great Britain and Ireland at that time of 43.66 million, gross savings would equate to £3,820,250. He then deducted a third of this “to meet all possible objections, including loss of profit to producers of artificial light”, arriving at net savings of £2,546,833. He claimed “a permanent economy equivalent to a reduction of the National Debt by at least one hundred million pounds sterling”, but didn’t initially elaborate on how he arrived at this figure.

(end of excerpt)

Read how Willett markets his idea and booklet and how he struggles for years to get it through the UK Parliament and into reality. The Great Daylight Saving Time Controversy can be obtained from Amazon, Kobo Books, Apple iTunes and Google Play:

I’ve added a simple index to the pdf version of my ebook on daylight saving time, The Great Daylight Saving Time Controversy; no indexes in ebooks themselves. This will give people an idea what’s in the book. The numbers refer to the page numbers in the pdf version. (I was going to single space the entries sometime but I think this would mean pressing Shift + Enter about 3400 times, which is the total number of entries.)

My latest ebook, The Great Daylight Saving Time Controversy, has just been published by Australian eBook Publisher. It’s available at the various Amazon sites, Kobo, Apple and Google. See links below (Amazon links come up as images; the first one is the Australian site and the second one is the US site).

The book examines the origins of daylight saving, including the historical development of calendars, clocks, standard time, and the idea of changing the clock to give more daylight late in the day. It looks at the history of daylight saving in every country that has ever used the measure. It also analyses daylight saving in each state of the US, Australia and Brazil, and each Canadian province.

It features many intriguing and often prolonged battles between advocates and critics of daylight saving in countries around the world, as well as lighter moments. It highlights the determination of daylight saving time champions such as the UK’s William Willett, the US’s Robert Garland and Harley Staggers, New Zealand’s Thomas Sidey and Tasmania’s John Steer. It delves into the chaotic daylight saving situations that emerged, notably in the US and Canada, but also elsewhere. Every country and sometimes each state has a different and usually controversial story to tell.

See the contents page of the ebook below. Length is about 400 pages in Word/pdf format.

We have always wanted to know the time of day. In the Stone Age, sticks were put in the ground, and people saw how the direction and length of shadow changed throughout the day. Sundials were developed as early as 5,500 years ago in Egypt. Personal sundials were around in Roman times. By the 1270s, mechanical clocks appeared on towers in English and Italian cities. As technology improved, clocks became smaller until eventually they were small enough to put on a wall or table in a house. Soon they were small enough to fit in one’s pocket. Thus a pocket watch was an extension of clock-making technology rather than an invention in its own right.

A pocket clock is mentioned in a letter by Italian clockmaker Bartholomew Manfredi in 1462. He offered the Marchese di Manta a “pocket clock” superior to that of the Duke of Modena, who must have already owned one of these gadgets at the time. Spring-driven clocks were invented in Italy in the late 1400s. Using this technology, German locksmith Peter Henlein first made a portable watch during a period of asylum between 1504 and 1508. It could run for forty hours without rewinding. He created the first pocket watch in 1524.

Early pocket watches were cumbersome, box-shaped or drum-like contraptions, more suited to wearing around the neck than trying to squeeze into one’s pocket. But watch-making soon spread through Europe and England. Henry VIII probably wore a watch on a chain around his neck.

They were not particularly accurate though. Large clocks kept better time, but neither clocks nor watches had minute hands until much later. Pocket watches became noted as ornaments rather than as useful timepieces. A variety of craftsmen, such as watchmakers, casemakers, enamelers, jewelers and engravers, came up with elaborate cases and dials. French watches, in particular, were quite decorative and expensive. It became the fashion among the aristocracy to wear and show off their pocket watches, their accuracy being of secondary importance. As accuracy of pocket watches improved, the extravagant styles diminished.

The invention of the balance spring in 1675 by Dutchman Christian Huygens meant that clocks and pocket watches were accurate enough to add a minute hand. By this time, a good watch was accurate to about ten minutes a day. Improvements in escapement, or the working mechanism of a watch or clock, further improved accuracy, as did jeweled bearings to reduce friction. Abraham-Louis Breguet created a self-winding watch in 1780.

An assortment of craftsmen were used to make pocket watches. The division of labor was quite pronounced. Separate individuals would make the rough castings, case, spring, dial and hands. A watchmaker would then put all the parts together. One of the reasons watches were so expensive was because there were so many people involved. Raw materials weren’t cheap either. And of course everything was made by hand. This was the norm until mid 19th century when mechanization of pocket watch production started in the United States. Pocket watches then became more affordable.

They became popular on coaches and with other travelers. The use of pocket watches became widespread with the development of the railways in the mid to late 19th century. Trains had to run to a timetable and passengers had to know what time their train was arriving and departing. Pocket watches were also carried by railroad staff so they could keep their trains running to timetables. With more and more trains, accidents could occur if a train was running late and passing through an area where another train was running on time, especially on single-track lines.

The American Railway Association met in 1887 to discuss standards for watches. While officials were still procrastinating, a train accident causing eight deaths occurred at Kipton, Ohio, in 1891 because an engineer’s watch stopped for four minutes. Soon after this, a chief time inspector was appointed to develop a timepiece checking system and precision standards for all pocket watches used by train staff.

The General Railroad Timepiece Standards of 1893 stated that pocket watches used on the railways had to be “… open faced, size 16 or 18, have a minimum of 17 jewels, adjusted to at least five positions, keep time accurately to within 30 seconds a week, adjusted to temps of 34 to 100 (degrees) F, have a double roller, steel escape wheel, lever set, regulator, winding stem at 12 o’clock, and have bold black Arabic numerals on a white dial, with black hands”. Railroad workers today are still obliged to keep their watches accurate, or face discipline.

The demise of the pocket watch began in the late 19th century when wristwatches were first manufactured. This followed their invention by Patek Philippe in 1868. Women took up the new trend but men still preferred pocket watches, considering wristwatches as unmanly. But males on the frontline in World War I found that wristwatches were more convenient, and male fashion changed from that time. Wristwatches were more practical in occupations such as pilots and nursing.

Pocket watches enjoyed a brief resurgence in the late 1970s when men’s three piece suits became fashionable again. Some men at this time put a pocket watch in their vest pocket, which was the original purpose of it.

Today there is a niche market for pocket watches for males. However, a jacket is usually needed as they can be uncomfortable in trouser pockets. Women’s clothing, with its lack of pockets, isn’t usually practical for the carrying of a pocket watch. A gold-cased pocket watch is often given to an employee for long service or at retirement.

In prehistoric times, people used the sun to tell the time of day. When the sun rose in the morning, they knew it was time to rise and get on with their daily tasks. They knew that the middle of the day was when the sun was highest in the sky. As the sun sank towards the horizon, they knew it was time to return to their camp and prepare for nightfall. Accurate time keeping wasn’t necessary.

With the development of bureaucracies, religion and other activities, a need emerged to better organise time, and civilisations in the Middle East and North Africa started dividing the day into parts.

An obelisk, a type of sundial, was the first device to tell the time. These were made by the Egyptians as early as 3500 BCE and were tall, thin, tapering, four sided structures made from a single piece of stone. Often over 70 feet high and weighing many tons, their moving shadow formed a kind of clock, dividing the daylight hours into two parts either side of midday. These structures showed the year’s longest and shortest days, when the shadow at noon was shortest and longest respectively. Later examples included markings around the base to show further divisions of day. Twenty-six ancient Egyptian obelisks survive but they are scattered around the world, with 11 in Italy, eight in Egypt, three in England and one each in France, Israel, Turkey and the United States.

In about 1500 BCE, the Egyptians developed a more accurate type of sundial, the shadow clock. This was the first portable timepiece. It divided daylight hours into ten parts plus a twilight hour at each end of the day. An elevated crossbar cast a moving shadow over a long stem that had five spaced marks. But it had to be turned the other way at noon and was no good on overcast days. Various improvements were made over the centuries and by 30 BCE, Roman writer Vitruvius identified 13 different sundial types used in Greece, Asia Minor and Italy. The Romans had pocket sundials only a few centimetres in diameter.

The star clock or merkhet, developed by the Egyptians around 600 BCE, is the oldest known astronomical tool and was used to align the foundations of pyramids and temples with the compass points. It was made from the central rib of a palm leaf and used a string with a weight on the end to obtain a vertical line. Using the Pole Star, two of them could be used to determine a north-south line and thus night-time hours when other stars crossed the meridian.

Another Egyptian invention was the water clock. It was more accurate than the obelisk and perhaps the earliest timekeeping device that didn’t depend on using celestial bodies. One was found in the tomb of pharaoh Amenhotep I, who was buried around 1500 BCE. The Greeks used them from about 325 BCE, calling them clepsydras, meaning ‘water thieves’. They were stone vessels with sloping sides and a tiny hole in the bottom that allowed water to drip out at a constant rate. Others were cylindrical or bowl shaped, designed to slowly fill with water through a tiny hole, with markings on the inside measuring the number of hours it took. They could be used by day or night and were often set up alongside a sundial for use on gloomy days and at night. Similar bowls, made of metal, were still in use in North Africa in the 20th century.

Greek and Roman horologists and astronomers developed more elaborate, mechanised water clocks from 100 BCE to 500 CE. They regulated pressure, had bells and gongs (probably the first alarm clock), or had doors and windows that opened to show little figures of people, or moved pointers or dials. Some included astrological models of the universe.

Macedonian astronomer Andronikos built the Tower of the Winds in Athens in about 50 BCE, to show scholars and customers mechanical hour indicators and sundials. It had a 24 hour mechanised clepsydra and indicators for the eight winds, as well as showing the seasons and astrological information. The building still stands, near the Acropolis.

Astronomical and astrological clock making developed in China between 200 and 1300 CE. A clock tower built by Su Sung in 1088 CE shows the lengths people went to in order to tell the time. An elaborate contraption over thirty feet high, it had a water driven escapement, a power driven armillary sphere (a ball representing the earth and showing the poles, equator, meridians, parallels and apparent path of the sun) for observations, an automatically rotating celestial globe, and manikins that rang bells or gongs and held tablets showing the hour.

However, water flow rates are hard to control and a high degree of accuracy of time is not possible with water clocks. People looked for other ways. But in Europe there wasn’t much technological advancement in the Middle Ages, spanning about 500–1500 CE. Some people had simple sundials above doorways to show noon and the four ‘tides’ of time that governed the working day in the medieval period. Candle clocks were also used. Several types of pocket sundials were common from the 10th century. An English version took account of the sun’s altitude in different seasons.

Hourglasses were the first dependable and fairly accurate timepieces. Although a number of ancient civilisations had the technology to make them, such as the Egyptians who invented glassmaking around 1500 BCE, the first definite evidence was when one appeared in a painting by Italian Ambrogio Lorenzetti in 1328. They were used on ships from the 14th century and perhaps as earlier as the 11th century. Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan had 18 hourglasses on each of his five ships for his voyage around the world from 1519. From the 15th century, they were used in churches, in industry and for cooking. They are still commonly used as eggtimers, in board games, on computer screens, and as shower-timers. The Australian Parliament uses one to time certain procedures.

Large mechanical clocks, with an hour hand only, began appearing in the towers of English and Italian cities as early as the 1270s. The clocks were weight-driven and had verge and foliot escapement mechanisms, usually involving weighted rope unwinding from the barrel, turning a toothed escape wheel. The oscillation period was hard to regulate as the mechanism depended on the amount of driving force and friction. Clocks could be out by plus or minus an hour a day.

The first portable clock came around 1500 CE when German locksmith Peter Henlein invented a spring-powered clock. This allowed for smaller clocks that people could put on a table or shelf rather than on the wall. Using the same technology, Henlein created the first pocket watch in 1524, although the first wristwatch wasn’t until the late 19th century. It is thought that Henry VIII wore a pocket watch on a chain around his neck. But the clocks and watches slowed as the mainspring unwound, making them too inaccurate to worry about a minute hand. The first clock with a minute hand was by Swiss clockmaker Jost Burgi in 1577 but it wasn’t precise.

Greater accuracy of clocks was achieved in the 17th century. Dutch scientist Christian Huygens built the first pendulum clock in 1656, based on a design by Galileo. The clock was accurate to within a minute a day and soon to less than 10 seconds. A pendulum clock’s escapement usually involves a weight or spring on the gear, forcing it to rotate. The gear pushes against an arm that is connected to the pendulum, making it move from side to side. Minute hands and then second hands were introduced in the 1670s, but the addition of these hands was gradual, and a hundred years later some town clocks still only had an hour hand.

Huygens also developed the balance wheel and spring assembly in 1675, allowing watches to be out by no more than 10 minutes a day. The mechanism is still used in some wristwatches. The accuracy of pendulum clocks improved to one second a day in 1721 thanks to English clockmaker George Graham when he found a way to compensate for changes in the length of a pendulum caused by temperature variation. Pendulum clocks remained the most accurate clock type through to about 1930.

In the 18th century, English carpenter and self-taught clockmaker John Harrison refined Graham’s method and also found new ways of reducing friction. He revolutionised sea travel by inventing a chronometer, a maritime clock that could accurately assess longitude, and show the time. On the strength of an offer of £20,000 by the British Government to the person who found a way of determining longitude to within half a degree and coming up with a clock accurate to two seconds a day on a long sea voyage, Graham spent thirty years of trial and error to perfect his chronometer. It easily met the criteria but he spent many more years fighting the government before he was finally paid.

Our pursuit of accuracy and perfection continued. Siegmund Riefler of Germany developed a clock in 1889 with an almost free pendulum and accurate to a hundredth of a second a day. The first free pendulum clock was invented around 1898 by R. J. Rudd. The pendulum swings freely for one minute without control by the escapement, while he used a subsidiary or ‘slave’ clock to send an impulse to the pendulum every minute and to keep time between impulses.

But it was W. H. Shortt’s free pendulum clock, first demonstrated in 1921, that replaced Riefler’s clock as the standard in astronomical observatories. The gravity arm or slave pendulum pushes the timekeeping or master pendulum to maintain its motion and drives the clock’s hands. Thus the timekeeping pendulum has no mechanical tasks to disturb its regularity. This clock remained the norm until the development of quartz crystal clocks in the 1930s and 1940s.

Crystals generate voltage when mechanical stress is applied, allowing crystal clocks to operate. A crystal changes shape if an electric field is applied to it. By squeezing or bending it, the crystal generates an electric field. The interaction between mechanical stress and electric field makes the crystal vibrate. This gives a constant frequency electric signal to operate an electronic clock. Canadian Warren Marrison of Bell Laboratories made the first quartz clock in 1927. The clocks are far more accurate than any previous clock as they have no gears or escapements to upset their regular frequency. However, they do rely on mechanical vibration, whose frequency depends on the size and shape of the crystal. Quartz clocks still dominate the market as they are reliable, accurate enough for most purposes, and cheap.

Most car clocks now have quartz movements. In earlier times, travellers used a range of portable timepieces, including pocket sundials and pocket watches. Pendulum clocks only work when they are stationary and are no use in vehicles because motion and a change in speed will affect the movement and pace of the pendulum. In the 1790s, Swiss watchmaker Abraham-Louis Breguet, living and working in France, made the first carriage clock, selling it to Napoleon. Placing pocket watches in leather holders and attaching them to a carriage’s front board was popular. Mechanical car clocks could be bought as an accessory by 1908 and electric clocks from the 1930s.

Atomic clocks are considerably more accurate again than quartz. The first one, based on ammonia, was built in 1949 by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology. In 1955, Louis Essen of the National Physical Laboratory in the United Kingdom came up with a caesium based atomic clock. NIST completed a caesium clock in 1957. With the high degree of accuracy of these clocks, it was decided in 1967 to base the definition of a second on atomic time rather than on the earth’s revolution around the sun, which had been the case from 1956. A second is thus defined as 9,192,631,770 cycles of the caesium atom’s resonant frequency. Claims as to the accuracy of atomic clocks include a billionth of a second per day and one second in six million years.

We have come to depend on very precise time. Gone are the days when people only needed to know the time to the nearest hour, minute or even second. Technology and industry need extremely accurate clocks. Demand continues to drive the search for ever greater accuracy of time. Global positioning systems and network time protocol are used to synchronise timekeeping systems around the world.